For the social insurance industry, Africa is considered to be a market of the future where “the scramble for
African customers” just began. With a share of more than 80% of all insurances sales, the Southern African
countries of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana are dominating the life insurance market. In Namibia, though
being only a small country in respect to its population size, insurances worth of 1,0 billion USD were sold in
2019. Life insurances turned out best sellers, including funeral covers to provide for the entire family.
Customers appear to have considerable confidence in their insurers and found a way of how to merge company
requirements, culture-specific preferences and national laws of inheritance thus delaying social obligations in
time.
This paper looks into the backdrops of increased sales and redirected monetary flows. It is argued that striving
for a good life and caring for the afterlife impacts not only savings behavior but also notions of time and the
relations between the living and the dead.
